Engineering students, like their peers in other areas of study, enter college today with an open
mind. They have hopes and dreams, fears and priorities . . . and when students begin their
university career, their goals include having an international experience, as well as having real
world experience that will someday lead them to a job (1).

Today’s students grew up in an increasingly shrinking world, with about half of them having had
an international travel experience with their family and nearly all of them having taken a foreign
language in their earlier education (1). Somewhere along the way, though, the international
experience doesn’t seem to fit within the engineering curriculum; there are too many course
requirements to complete before graduation; and students drop off from their grander intentions,
many even letting go of their hopes of developing a better understanding of a foreign language
while at college. The barriers to international engineering study are multidimensional and
include student barriers (perceived detraction from progress in the major, financial, language,
reluctance to travel), faculty barriers (time away from research, family, reward system), and
institutional barriers (curriculum constraints, awarding of credit, academic calendar, academic
content).

WPI has found ways to overcome these barriers and has been providing an international
experience for its graduates since 1980 – currently more than 50% of each graduating class has
an international experience. Our paper will attempt to answer three important questions: What
institutional structures make our program work? How do we know the program works? How can
significant international experiences work at other engineering schools?

Background

There are many priorities for students, but in a world where America’s reach seems to touch
every spot on the globe, where McDonald’s, Coca Cola and The Gap appear on every street
corner from Bangkok to Boston, most engineering students (97%) still complete their education
without an international educational experience and with diminished knowledge of their place in
the global marketplace as engineers (1). Evidence seems to indicate that students do not have an
appreciation of their role as engineers in society, as they are most often not involved in solving